Akan Religion
AKAN RELIGION. The Akan are a cluster of peoples numbering some five to six million, most of whom speak a language known as Twi. They occupy the mainly forested region of southern Ghana and the eastern Ivory Coast and include the coastal Fanti to the south. They are divided into over a dozen independent kingdoms, the best known of which is the Ashanti (Asante) kingdom whose capital city is Kumasi in central Ghana.
Most Akan are forest dwellers, with yams and other root crops as staples; plantains, oil palms, and other trees are important. Cocoa, palm oil, gold, and timber have long been the main exports, producing a high standard of living. The pattern of settlement is based upon towns, each town being the seat of a king or chief. Village farms are set between the towns.
The Akan are divided into eight matrilineal clans (abusua), branches of which are dispersed across all the Akan kingdoms; in theory exogamous, the clans are neither corporate nor political units. The local branches of clans are divided into matrilineal lineages or houses, the basic property-owning residential and domestic groups. Across this matrilineal organization runs that of patrilines, noncorporate groups known as ntoro among the Ashanti; in most areas these groupings are today of far less importance than in the past.
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